Designers have shortlisted 25 gardens for the 2027 Society of Garden and Environment Designers Awards, ranging from grand estates to primary-school play areas. The public can vote online for the SGLD People’s Choice Award until 31 October. One standout entry is a Spessart mountain garden near Frankfurt that creates a seamless transition between a new chalet and the surrounding environment. The design relies on dry-stone walls and rocky steps, eliminating the need for concrete. Pines ground the scheme and connect it to the woodland, while a diverse mix of perennials, grasses, ferns, and slow-growing trees weaves through the terrain. Strategic planting frames sweeping valley views, embedding the garden fully in its mountainous setting.
From Woodland Retreats to Urban Sanctuaries
Winners of the 2026 SGLD Awards have been announced, featuring several notable projects. Stefano Marinaz Environment Architecture created the Woodland Glade Sanctuary, transforming a mostly lawned plot into an immersive environment that encourages exploration and closer connection with its woodland setting. Meandering paths lead through layered, naturalistic planting, creating spaces for dining, contemplation, and relaxation. The designers replaced concrete paving with gravel to improve rainwater infiltration and chose diverse planting to support pollinators and invertebrates. Log piles and seating provide additional wildlife habitat, while bulbs add biodiversity to areas where the lawn has been retained.
Wilderness Retreats in Mountain Regions
In the rugged peaks of the Toledo mountains, El Quejigal repurposes an old cattle barn into a serene retreat nestled within a sprawling 250-acre property. The design intentionally merges the home with its wild surroundings, using reconstructed dry-stone walls, sheltered porches, and winding gravel pathways. To withstand harsh conditions—from scorching 40°C summers to freezing -7°C winters—the environment relies on hardy, drought-resistant vegetation.
Grass is limited to the pool area, ensuring the natural environment takes center stage. Meanwhile, Future Plants Environment in the Netherlands functions as an experimental botanical center. Its adaptable layout includes gently sloped planting beds that enhance visibility and drainage, along with built-in seating for ongoing plant observation. The scheme prioritizes hardy perennial groupings suited to climate resilience and biodiversity, with evergreen grasses stabilizing the soil and cutting water needs.
London’s historic Finsbury Circus Gardens has been reworked into a lively urban oasis. A vast central lawn, bordered by limestone and custom seating, serves as a communal hub. Expanded, accessible pathways link diverse ecological zones. The shaded West Gardens display fern varieties and shade-loving perennials, transitioning into lively borders packed with achilleas, sisyrinchiums, and heleniums to attract pollinators.
Water management systems, modeled after old marshes and rain gardens, control runoff efficiently. Near York, the National Trust’s Beningbrough Hall features a Mediterranean-inspired garden that honors its Italian heritage through a climate-adapted design. This 4,500-square-meter space replaces unused grass with a biodiverse gravel garden. Sleek York-stone walls carve out seating areas and frame views of the hall, while flowing water through channels, pools, and decorative bowls adds dynamic movement.
Shade is provided by jasmine-draped pergolas, a parasol, and a custom permeable shade sail. A compact outdoor kitchen includes an integrated herb garden. The plant selection emphasizes hardy Mediterranean species that tolerate wind and drought. Nearby, a newly finished garden around a Grade I-listed Jacobean manor in Leicestershire harmonizes grand architecture with romantic plantings. Formal and informal areas offer privacy while remaining visually striking from the house. The space uses reclaimed York stone, locally sourced materials, and permeable gravel surfaces for sustainability. Structured yew topiary and hornbeam hedges provide bold lines softened by fragrant roses, salvias, and lush perennials.
For homeowners struggling with clay soil and waterlogging, the Pines Garden in Yorkshire offers a functional redesign. The oversized, separated driveway has been replaced with outdoor areas for dining, lounging, sunbathing, and reflection. Warm clay pavers, re-laid York stone, and a repurposed stone table connect the terrace to key viewpoints. The design incorporates French drains and a rain garden to handle excess moisture. Raised beds use on-site crushed rubble for drainage, while year-round planting delivers seasonal color and plant variety.
Healthcare Gardens That Heal
Horatio’s Garden in Northern Ireland exemplifies how environment design can enhance healthcare settings. Created for patients, families, and staff at Musgrave Park Hospital’s Spinal Injuries Unit in Belfast, the fully accessible space includes smooth, level resin-bound gravel paths and automated doors. Sensory plantings, woodland-edge plantings, specimen trees, and native hedges form a biodiverse backdrop. The layout features a garden room, therapeutic greenhouse, raised growing beds, private garden pods, and a boccia court. Curving pathways link social areas, quiet seating spots, and a stone water feature.
A garden in Lymington, Hampshire, creatively addresses environmental challenges by converting them into design elements. Rainwater from a listed home and outbuildings feeds a central bog garden, utilizing wet soils to support moisture-loving plants alongside raised walkways. Nearby dining areas overlook a sleek reflecting pool centered on a bold metal sculpture. Along the River Thames in Berkshire, the River Thames House garden is built to endure annual flooding as part of a local strategy. It features plants capable of surviving submerged for a month, such as Geranium macrorrhizum ‘WhiteNess’. Two lawns provide spaces for gathering and recreation, while an oak boardwalk crosses a wildflower meadow and orchard. A raised swimming pool, hidden behind curved hedges, remains flood-resistant.
Continuing the Showcase of Award-Winning Designs
Perched on a Warwickshire hilltop, Coates Barn features a welcoming central courtyard with a rectangular water feature, seating, and a timber pergola. Reused paving and brick accents enrich the hard landscaping. Lush, layered borders complement the stone structures and add color against sweeping farmland views. Beyond the courtyard lie inner and outer meadows with circular paths, a children’s play area adjacent to a newly planted orchard, and native hedging.
The Lookout in Branscombe, Devon, revamps a sloping plot by replacing grass with level seating zones and connecting pathways. A focal point is the firepit terrace, where a circular limestone-paved area includes a curved timber bench. The planting scheme blends ornamental grasses like stipas and pennisetums with Mediterranean plants such as olives, lavender, salvias, and sea thrift.
Situated within Poole’s Canford Cliffs Conservation Area, the Canford Cliffs garden balances coastal living with intentional design. Surrounding a home by US architects Hutker, the space offers sun-drenched outdoor areas while protecting designated trees. Sustainably quarried Purbeck stone forms terraces for dining, lounging, and poolside relaxation. Near the lawn, a swimming pool is paired with an outdoor shower, boat access, and a pétanque area. The planting combines structural plants with lively coastal species, including towering Echium pininana, Hydrangea arborescens ‘Annabelle’, architectural grasses, and Taxus baccata hedges.
Historic Estates and Coastal Cliffs
Designed around a Grade II-listed thatched cottage in Essex, this garden negotiates a challenging slope through terraced, level lawns, limestone steps, and snapped flint-faced retaining walls. A central avenue of box-pruned Carpinus betulus anchors the layout. On the lowest terrace, a swimming pool, flanked by decking, sits immersed in a woodland-edge meadow. Richly textured drift planting of ornamental grasses and perennials seamlessly bridges the formal terracing with the wilder woodland beyond, establishing a wildlife-friendly retreat for seasonal relaxation.
The Hantone Garden, located in the town of Littlehampton, is a small, plant-rich retreat based on food forest principles. It weaves together multistem trees, herbs, edimentals, and perennials in mounded beds, inspired by woodland, meadow, and edge habitats. Permeable hardscaping including dark charcoal-grey clay pavers, Purbeck limestone gravel, and stepping stones creates seamless links between the home and dedicated outdoor zones. At the heart of the design is a sunken Corten-steel water bowl, surrounded by boulders and log walls, providing different habitats for wildlife.
The Serene Garden in London reworks a redundant lift and levels to restore the flow between the house and garden, forming a series of connected outdoor rooms. A glazed pergola complete with an outdoor fireplace provides a yoga space for four, and there are generous terraces for entertaining up to ten people. The rich, layered planting scheme features multi-stem trees, evergreen structure, sculptural hedging, and fragrant blooms such as Rosa Tranquillity (= ‘Ausnoble’). Complete with integrated water features, lighting, and hidden speakers, the garden offers a versatile haven for relaxing and entertaining.
Topiary and Corten steel define this small north London garden by Arne Maynard. The design balances strong architectural lines with soft planting. Resolving a 2.5m level change, the design establishes usable outdoor areas that harmonise with the house’s architecture. From the main terrace, stepping stones set within gravel and evergreen groundcover weave past sculptural yew topiary domes toward a raised seating area. Multi-stem amelanchiers form a mid-level canopy, adding vertical rhythm and privacy. Lower access is defined by a central planting feature flanked by tiered, powder-coated steel beds. Cascading greenery, ferns, and evergreen climbers frame views from the interior kitchen and dining spaces, enhancing the garden’s immersive, enclosed feel.
Designing for Climate Resilience
The Pines Garden, created by Bestall & Co. Ltd and led by principal designer Lee Bestall MSGLD, features a selection of 13 ‘trub’ tree-like shrubs. Guidance is provided for creating accessible gardens that welcome users of all abilities.
